EA announces "a new multi-year exclusive licensing agreement to develop and publish globally new games based on Star Wars characters and storylines." The announcement has comments from EA Labels President Frank Gibeau, as does a new blog update on the topic on EA News, neither of which disclose the financial terms of the agreement. Here's what the announcement says about the deal: "Here's what this covers: "Under the agreement, EA will develop and publish new Star Wars titles for a core gaming audience, spanning all interactive platforms and the most popular game genres, while Disney will retain certain rights to develop new titles within the mobile, social, tablet and online game categories." Here's Frank Gibeau's outline of their general plans:

The EA Studios that will develop these games are some of the most innovative and popular creative teams in the world, and include DICE and Visceral, in addition to the BioWare team, which is already developing for the Star Wars franchise. These imaginative teams will make games that may borrow from films, but the games will be entirely original with all new stories. Powering it all will be the Frostbite 3 development engine – guaranteeing incredible graphic fidelity, environments and characters.